Isaiah 53:1-12 The Sin-Bearing Messiah
1 Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? 2 For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, And as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him,There is no beauty that we should desire Him. 3 He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
4 Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken,Smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities;The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way;And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted,Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth. 8 He was taken from prison and from judgment, And who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; For the transgressions of My people He was stricken. 9 And they made His grave with the wicked — But with the rich at His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was any deceit in His mouth.
10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand. 11 He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, For He shall bear their iniquities. 12 Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, And He shall divide the spoil with the strong, Because He poured out His soul unto death, And He was numbered with the transgressors, And He bore the sin of many,
And made intercession for the transgressors.
NKJV
[Editor's comment: We who are Christians and were brought up in the church can easily identify this great Messianic chapter in Isaiah to the suffering Savior Who suffered and died in our place to forgive our sins and give us eternal life. We know that Jesus died for our sins, but for the Jews they have not been able to see this chapter as we do. There is veil covering their eyes and they are unable to see what is clear to us.
It is important for us to see that the suffering and death of Jesus was costly to God. What we must come to understand that man cannot save himself. He will never be able to measure up to the stature of God's Jesus Christ. The truth is that Jesus descended to the level of man's sinfulness and utter helplessness to save himself in order to lift him to the stature of Christ. He did that without ever sinning. He was without any sin in His life.
To accomplish this mission to provide redemption for man, there had to be an atonement made between God and man. There was a barrier that had to be broken down because man's sin created a rupture, an enmity, and a broken relationship between man and God. The barrier that was created had two sides to it. On one side is the Holiness of God. On the other side is the pride and perverseness of man sinful nature on the other side.
When Jesus Christ died on the cross He cried out, "It is finished." It was that divine moment that revealed for all us to see that the most sacrificial deed ever experienced by the Creator was at the supreme cost of revealing and satisfying the holiness of God and making it possible for His mercy and grace to be extended to man through the death of God's Son.
It is at the Cross that God demonstrated His great love for mankind. At the Cross God makes a compelling and compassionate appeal for man to surrender to Almighty God to make reconciliation complete. It was God Who was in Christ Jesus reconciling the world to Himself. Man has to respond by using his free-will. God does not force us to do that. It must come from within us as we sense God drawing us to His Son for salvation.
If Calvary will not break down a man's pride and convince him of his utter hopelessness without the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, nothing else will.
Read this 53rd Chapter of Isaiah with reverence and allow the Holy Spirit to speak to your heart. If you have not confessed your sins and repented and turned to God and placed your faith in Jesus Christ, today is the time to do so. I pray that you will.]
1 Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? 2 For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, And as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him,There is no beauty that we should desire Him. 3 He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
4 Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken,Smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities;The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way;And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted,Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth. 8 He was taken from prison and from judgment, And who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; For the transgressions of My people He was stricken. 9 And they made His grave with the wicked — But with the rich at His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was any deceit in His mouth.
10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand. 11 He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, For He shall bear their iniquities. 12 Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, And He shall divide the spoil with the strong, Because He poured out His soul unto death, And He was numbered with the transgressors, And He bore the sin of many,
And made intercession for the transgressors.
NKJV
[Editor's comment: We who are Christians and were brought up in the church can easily identify this great Messianic chapter in Isaiah to the suffering Savior Who suffered and died in our place to forgive our sins and give us eternal life. We know that Jesus died for our sins, but for the Jews they have not been able to see this chapter as we do. There is veil covering their eyes and they are unable to see what is clear to us.
It is important for us to see that the suffering and death of Jesus was costly to God. What we must come to understand that man cannot save himself. He will never be able to measure up to the stature of God's Jesus Christ. The truth is that Jesus descended to the level of man's sinfulness and utter helplessness to save himself in order to lift him to the stature of Christ. He did that without ever sinning. He was without any sin in His life.
To accomplish this mission to provide redemption for man, there had to be an atonement made between God and man. There was a barrier that had to be broken down because man's sin created a rupture, an enmity, and a broken relationship between man and God. The barrier that was created had two sides to it. On one side is the Holiness of God. On the other side is the pride and perverseness of man sinful nature on the other side.
When Jesus Christ died on the cross He cried out, "It is finished." It was that divine moment that revealed for all us to see that the most sacrificial deed ever experienced by the Creator was at the supreme cost of revealing and satisfying the holiness of God and making it possible for His mercy and grace to be extended to man through the death of God's Son.
It is at the Cross that God demonstrated His great love for mankind. At the Cross God makes a compelling and compassionate appeal for man to surrender to Almighty God to make reconciliation complete. It was God Who was in Christ Jesus reconciling the world to Himself. Man has to respond by using his free-will. God does not force us to do that. It must come from within us as we sense God drawing us to His Son for salvation.
If Calvary will not break down a man's pride and convince him of his utter hopelessness without the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, nothing else will.
Read this 53rd Chapter of Isaiah with reverence and allow the Holy Spirit to speak to your heart. If you have not confessed your sins and repented and turned to God and placed your faith in Jesus Christ, today is the time to do so. I pray that you will.]